Remember last week, when I dedicated several hours of my time to the important research question “Was Jane Austen making an anal sex joke?” That same energy has not carried forward into week two. I do not understand what’s so morally insupportable about putting on a little play with some neighborhood friends, even a slightly saucy play, and Fanny and Edmund are so annoying about it that I can’t be bothered researching it to find out. Fanny does not think the Bertrams and the Crawfords should put on a play; Edmund does not think the Bertrams and the Crawfords should put on a play; and Sir Thomas insists that the Bertrams and the Crawfords must not put on a play.
I have to say, I am enjoying Mansfield Park so much. Part of the reason people seem to hate it is that it doesn’t have a satisfying romance like some of the others — which is true, certainly, but Jane Austen’s dry observational humor on the tiny interactions between people has never been better. There’s a part where everyone’s out for a walk on Mr. Rushworth’s estate, and they all abandon Fanny on a bench while they wander around, and then when they get home everyone’s cross because “they had all been walking after each other, and the junction which had taken place at last seemed, to Fanny’s observation, to have been as much too late for re-establishing harmony, as it confessedly had been for determining on any alteration.”
(I know that’s a small thing, but it’s so on point! That is how it goes when nobody makes a plan and everybody’s just wandering around all willy-nilly!)
Also, re the casting process for the play:
Mr. Yates was particularly pleased: he had been sighing and longing to [play the part of] the Baron at Ecclesford, had begrudged every rant of Lord Ravenshaw’s, and been forced to re-rant it all in his own room…. To do him justice, however, he did not resolve to appropriate [that role]; for remembering that there was some very good ranting-ground in [the part of] Frederick, he professed an equal willingness for that.
JANE AUSTEN YOU ARE KILLING ME.
Though I didn’t know it when I made my Mansfield in May schedule, this batch of chapters (chapters ten through twenty) perfectly encompasses the entire arc where they want to put on a play. A man called Mr. Yates arrives from the country, disappointed at having to abandon the plan to do a play at some other friend’s house, and then the young Bertrams (except for Fanny) and the Crawfords get all excited and want to do a play. The original idea is for them to perform it only among themselves, but you can just tell that when the time comes, they’re going to change their minds and want to invite everyone and be applauded for.
Edmund hates this. Fanny haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates this. They have several serious conversations about what a bad idea it is. Then Edmund, the jerk, shows up in Fanny’s room to be like, listen, I think I need to take part in the play, you know, for Reasons. (The reasons actually make sense to me, within the moral terms the book is laying out: They want to get a near-stranger to act in the play with them, and Edmund finds that unseemly and thinks that if he takes the role in question, it’ll be less overall inappropriate because it’ll be just within their two families.) I wouldn’t mind Edmund taking part in the play (since, again, I don’t mind that they’re doing a play, that seems perfectly cromulent), except that he kind of browbeats Fanny into agreeing that it’s the best course of action? He comes in to get her opinion; she says she doesn’t think he should do it; and he keeps asking the question in like fifteen different ways until he gets a version of her answer that sounds sort of like yes. Then he’s like “Great! We agree! I knew I could count on you!”
The worst, meanest thing that happens in this whole section is when everyone starts aggressively peer-pressuring Fanny to take a small role in the play. She keeps saying no, she’s very uncomfortable, and the other people keep insisting, and finally Mrs. Norris says, “I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her — very ungrateful, indeed, considering who and what she is,” which is staggeringly mean and has Fanny in tears.
Mary Crawford immediately comes to Fanny’s rescue, which is nice because Mary hasn’t been the most aware of Fanny’s situation up until then. She comes to sit by Fanny and cheers her up by asking what Fanny’s working on, where she got the pattern, what Fanny’s brother is up to at sea, how handsome that brother must be, etc. It’s legitimately very sweet, although it does prove that Mary Crawford knows perfectly well how to be polite about someone’s brother’s profession even if she herself does not personally want to socialize with someone in that profession, which nobody is asking her to do anyway. But I liked it, because so few characters ever seem aware of how vulnerable Fanny is in relation to her cousins and aunts, and I was glad that Mary took her side so visibly.
In fairness to Edmund — and I am trying to be scrupulously fair to Edmund because of how much I dislike him — he does defend Fanny when his father gets home and is mad about the play. He says this: “We have all been more or less to blame, every one of us, excepting Fanny. Fanny is the only one who has judged rightly throughout; who has been consistent. Her feelings have been steadily against it from first to last. She never ceased to think of what was due to you. You will find Fanny everything you could wish.” THANKS, EDMUND.
Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?
Yes! Henry Crawford is a big jerk in these chapters, although I have to say that the real villain is the societal system that forbids open honesty about one’s intentions until one is ready to propose. The fact that Henry Crawford is flirting outrageously with both Maria and Julia, to the point that a bunch of characters think he’s going to propose to Julia and Maria thinks he’s going to propose to Maria, is really shitty given that he has no interest in marrying them. It would be one thing if they were all playing the same fun flirty game, but Henry knows they’re not. Once the idea for the play is given up, Henry fucks off to Bath without a backward glance, leaving the Bertram sisters miserable, disappointed, and angry with each other.
Which: We are kind of far into the book for him to have no interest in Fanny yet. I had remembered him fixating on her much earlier on in the book, but I’m not sure they’ve had a single conversation as of chapter 20. She does notice him being a fuckboy to her cousins, but she’s not in a position to do anything about it. She runs it up the flagpole with Edmund, and Edmund is oblivious. Fanny says, wonderfully, “What a favourite he is with my cousins!” but Edmund doesn’t catch on at all. Edmund is a ding-dong.
Were the Crawfords Wronged?
Henry Crawford is terrible in this section, as I’ve said. But I think it’s mean that everyone keeps going on about how ugly and short Henry Crawford is. It comes up like five times in this section of the book! People keep being like, “I mean, he’s FINE if you like them SHORT” or they’ll be like “well he can’t play THAT part, he’s only five-eight, gross.” Calm down, weirdos!
Fanny also blames Mary Crawford for Edmund taking part in the play. It’s actually really uncool! She’s like, “Could it be possible? Edmund so inconsistent! Was he not deceiving himself? Was he not wrong? Alas! it was all Miss Crawford’s doing. She had seen her influence in every speech, and was miserable.”
A of all, Fanny, slow your roll with that. Edmund is actually capable of making his own wrong moral decisions; Mary Crawford is not the boss of him. Secondly, this is the severalth time that Fanny has blamed Mary Crawford for things Edmund is doing. Maybe try blaming the man who is doing the things, instead of the woman you think might possibly be motivating the man to do the things. And number three, Mary just went out of her way to be nice to Fanny, which supposedly is the whole reason Fanny likes Edmund in the first place, and Mary is far from the driving force behind the play-putting-on idea. So I am not sure whence this notion that Edmund’s acquiescence to the play is supposed to be Mary’s fault. FEELS LIKE EDMUND’S FAULT.
In closing, I love Mansfield Park. Twenty-year-old Jenny was not wrong; Mansfield Park is hilarious and great. If it weren’t for the years of sentimental attachment to and fun adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park might unseat Pride and Prejudice in my heart. I’m not 100% that won’t happen anyway. I am loving it. I can’t believe that it’s acquired this reputation for being grim and joyless when it is so consistently funny and smart. Like, yes, Edmund’s a pill, but all of Austen’s heroes1 are pills! No surprises there!
- Except Mr. Tilney, who is great. ↩